A Dallas man has told police he set a house fire early Tuesday that killed his teenage stepdaughter to punish his wife who wanted to divorce him, police said.

Santiago Lara, 46, faces capital murder charges after telling police he set the fatal fire at 2006 Quarry St., said Sgt. Gene Reyes, Dallas homicide detective.
The blaze, which was reported about 12:30 a.m., killed Destiny Brown, 18, according to a spokeswoman for the Dallas County Medical Examiner’s Office.

Reports that Lara was hiding in bushes outside the home while firefighters battled the blaze could not be confirmed Tuesday.

Reyes, however, said the man approached firefighters and police at the scene and was arrested. Later he told police why he set the fire.

”It was marital problems,” Reyes said. ”She had asked for a divorce and this was his way of retaliating.”

The family’s house was in a neighborhood just west of the intersection of Interstate 30 and Loop 12, also called Walton Walker Boulevard, in far west Dallas.

The fire was intense, said Joel Lavender, spokesman for Dallas Fire-Rescue. He said firefighters had it under control at 1:14 a.m.; they subsequently found Brown’s body in the rubble.